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Date Posted: 18:42:53 02/11/05 Fri GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Official report pins IRA to bank robbery (Las Vegas Sun)

bruary 08, 2005


Official: Report Pins IRA to Bank Robbery
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
ASSOCIATED PRESS


DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - A still-unpublished report into the raid of a Belfast bank firmly pins the Irish Republican Army to the record-setting theft, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told lawmakers Tuesday.

Ahern spoke hours after his Cabinet discussed the confidential contents of the report from the Independent Monitoring Commission, a panel of international experts formed by the British and Irish governments to monitor the activities of the IRA and other illegal Northern Ireland groups.

Both governments plan to publish the report Thursday.

Ahern has already said that, based on briefings from his own police force and authorities in Northern Ireland and Britain, he's confident that the IRA committed the Dec. 20 raid on Northern Bank, and that senior figures in Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, authorized it.

Asked whether the report backs those views, Ahern said: "If anything, it would go beyond anything I said."

The gang responsible for the robbery stole $50 million - the biggest cash theft in history. The IRA has repeatedly denied involvement, and police have made no arrests and recovered none of the cash.

But police chiefs, the British and Irish governments, and every other party besides Sinn Fein blame the IRA for a robbery that has shaken Northern Ireland's peace process.

It came a week after months of painstakingly managed negotiations designed to revive a Catholic-Protestant administration - the core goal of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord - fell short, chiefly because of the IRA's refusal to permit photos of its disarmament.

Last week, the IRA announced it was no longer willing to disarm, another important goal of the 1998 accord. The IRA followed that diplomatic retreat with a vague, tough-sounding statement that some analysts said could be an IRA threat to end its 1997 cease-fire.

Ahern said he didn't expect any political progress in Northern Ireland until months after the next British general election, which is expected in May. In the meantime, he said he didn't favor imposing any punishments on Sinn Fein.

Options include the withdrawal of salaries and other British taxpayer-provided benefits to Sinn Fein that currently exceed more than $650,000 a year and, more symbolically, a time-limited bar on Sinn Fein's right to participate in a future power-sharing administration. The power to impose either punishment rests with Britain, not Ireland.

The power-sharing restriction would be theoretical, because negotiations are extremely unlikely to be revived soon.

But Ahern said he didn't favor any punishment for Sinn Fein. He emphasized he would continue to negotiate directly with Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, both of whom are reputed members of the IRA's seven-man command.

"The issue of sanctions, exclusion, of blocking people and not engaging with people, is a hopeless exercise," Ahern said. "It will not move matters on."

Ahern offered no view on whether the Bush administration should bar Sinn Fein from any White House events around the St. Patrick's Day holiday March 17.

Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern - no relation to the prime minister - will discuss the issue Wednesday in Washington with senior U.S. senators and representatives as well as Bush's envoy to Northern Ireland, State Department official Mitchell Reiss.

"It's a matter for the Americans to announce their decisions, but as I understand it they have made their decisions on these matters," Ahern said.

Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, played an important role in kick-starting Northern Ireland's peace process by granting a visa to Sinn Fein's Adams in 1994 while the IRA was still bombing cities in Northern Ireland and England and killing police officers and British soldiers. In 1995, Clinton lifted fund-raising restrictions on Sinn Fein and invited Adams to the White House for St. Patrick's celebrations, a policy continued annually under Bush.

All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.

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